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Doubtful Convictions
That slap resounded through the hall, and I winced as I imagined the pain when I saw his chin turned over his left shoulder by the force of the blow. Already the welts were showing from the buffeting he received among the mocking, and jeering coming from false accusers and envious hearts crowded around him. Feet were poised to leap and the hands of those present seemed to ache to inflict agony on that man, and I questioned the justice of our deeds. His crime? He was a popular, itinerant preacher who challenged the inconsistencies of our religious practices. Without doubt he was very knowledgeable concerning our laws and practices, but he was not one of us. He dared to turn the people away from us to new ideas, and criticized our interpretation of the Scriptures, which he quite correctly revealed often ignored the text we held in such high esteem. It was this, which had brought him here: jealousy—pure, and simple.
I recall that first meeting after he had raised Lazarus from the dead. These things were exciting the people, and we regarded these emotions as dangerous. We claimed we feared for them. What would happen when these things failed? We demanded, and accused that these were causing the people to follow God for the wrong reasons. Yet we were unable to out maneuver him with words he so easily refuted, and we were unable to confuse him with our traps we set in hope to turn the people away from him.
It was a common complaint among us, “What can we do against a man who could do such miracles? How can we prevent the people from following this man?”
It was then that Caiaphas had spoken up [he was high priest that year]. “Are you all blind?” he asked. “Can’t you see that we have to kill him? It is surely better that one man should die than the whole nation be destroyed when we are accused of treason by the Romans!”
From that moment we had offered a reward to anyone leading us to Jesus that we might arrest him, and one of his own had betrayed him in a strange twist of fate.
Now, in this moment of doubt as I sat watching these evil proceedings I recalled the words I had heard as he looked, weeping over Jerusalem from the hilltop, “Jerusalem, O Jerusalem! If only you knew the peace I could bring. How I long to gather you safely as a hen gathers her chick, but now you are blind to the dangers that await you.”
I shivered involuntarily, had we done right? I could not help but think our envy caused us to err to our own pain. I imagined all manner of evils, and imagined that we were as a man who had marred himself because he was dissatisfied with his own reflection. The emotional pain that swept over me caused me to cower in fear as I anticipated the results of our evil actions.
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